I feed all my animals raw (or mostly raw) and would like to do the same for my bettas. Would I just feed fry? Maybe a pellet or two a week for vitamins? How many fry would I feed per day? My tanks have lots of hiding spots, so could I put in a week or so worth of fry and let him snack throughout the week? I have fed them occasionally before, and both the bettas are much more active and seem happier when fed fry, which is making me think harder about the switch :)
Thanks :)

Yes, but mine don't seem to like any of the frozen worms I have bought, and I won't feed them freeze dried ones (kinda defeats the purpose of raw lol). I have thought about brine shrimp as well, as they have eaten them before, but they don't like it as much as the fry

ETA: Fry wouldn't be the only thing I would feed, I would feed other live foods as well. There would be lots of variety!

I'm pretty new here and new to the fish thing, so I certainly don't have "qualified" answers by any means.

Personally, I think fry would fine but wouldn't doubt that some would have a problem with the humaneness of the idea.

When I was young I had a guppie tank with one shark (black with red tail is all I remember of his type), and his name was "PC" for population control. Certainly this is an occurance in nature, so I guess the "meat" of the question is, is fry nutritious enough to sustain a healthy betta life. Guess we'll have to wait on an expert for this answer.

I use guppy fry gut loaded but they can only eat the fry when they are newborn to about a week old due to growth and too big and fast for them to catch and eat...

I like to feed my homemade food too that I make out of raw shrimp, fresh crushed garlic and blanched spinach leaf all smashed together-I freeze it and break off what I need each day

mosquito larva, daphnia, seed shrimp, chopped red worms, smashed snails are also good foods to use

I was hoping you would see this thread :) Thanks for the info! I do have a few questions though, what does the garlic do? Do you use the frozen shrimp? Or the fresh kind? Does it make a difference? How much of each do you use for your mixture? As for the fry, my moms friend has platys and they are always having babies, that's where I have gotten fry in the past. She has a pretty constant supply in all age ranges :)

The smaller the better on the fry other wise they can't catch and eat them and feed the fry really good so they are gut loaded and as cruel as this sounds sometimes you have to injury the fry a bit so the Betta can catch and eat them-especially if the fry are older than a week or big tanks or the Betta is new at catching its own food.

I use the raw frozen shrimp because I am land locked...lol...but I have also use the frozen steamed kind too...for a small batch of home made food-I use 1 raw shrimp and chop/smash it all up and I use 3-5 fresh garlic cloves depending on their size and use a garlic press and smash that with the hot blanched baby spinach (3-6 leaves) and then smash it all together with the side of a knife-it should look/smell like a green garlic/shrimp paste not totally smooth but close...not exact amounts it varies with each batch with what I have and how big things are
I then will put it in a zip-lock baggie and smash flat and freeze and break off what I need each day

Garlic-I use as an anti-parsitic-long term use(6+ weeks) can help purge the digestive system of internal parasites-I have always done this because of the native species I used to collect to rid them of internal parasite and the garlic helps with appetite stimulation especially with wild caught fish...lol.....

Spinach-is the greens that are in the fish/inverts what the meat eating fish eats...kinda the "you are what you eat" theory gut loading in away

Shrimp-because it is high in protein and low in fat-I prefer raw but the cooked type is fine as well

Your welcome and I need to add-only use human grade food items and if your fish won't eat it...saute it and put it over noodle or rice.....laffs.....or make extra for yourself.....lol.....then you can say you ate fish food and liked it....lol...

In place of shrimp I have used live red worms from my garden (pesticide free) and one day I am going to make some using all my excess snails and see how that goes....but I wouldn't eat that....lol......fish only......